Herbed Breakfast Sausage Patties

I bought the Vegan Diner: Classic Comfort Food for the Body & Soul.  I received it a couple of weeks ago, but haven't made anything out of it.  Today, I decided to make Herbed Breakfast Sausage Patties.  I don't know why I wanted to make it as I've never been a big breakfast sausage fan, but I was looking for a tofu breakfast scramble and it just sounded good when I ran across the recipe.

This sausage dough was incredibly easy to make.  I loved the fact that all but 3 ingredients were whisked together. Then I only had to whisk the water, olive oil, and soy sauce (I used low sodium Tamari) and just stir it into the dry ingredients with a fork.

I used a coffee scoop to measure out the dough into 1/8 cup increments.  I don't have a small burger press, so I just used my hand to flatten the dough mounds into patties.  They came out fine.  I think part of the charm of breakfast sausage patties is that they aren't perfect patties when made at home.

I used my Wolfgang Puck Rice Cooker with the 3 stainless steel steamer trays to steam the patties.  I steamed the patties in the top steamer tray for 10 more minutes after removing the patties in the lower trays just to make sure they were done.  This rice cooker was an excellent investment and relatively cheap.  I only paid $50 for the entire set.  At the time of purchase, I had no idea I would stop eating meat and would use it repeatedly to make steaming seitan a snap!

So, the recipe says to let the sausage patties cool completely before removing them from the foil.  Then, the patties should be refrigerated, preferably overnight, before pan frying and consuming.  I removed the patties from the steaming trays and put them on a cookie rack to cool.

OK, did you think that I would make these on a Sunday morning and follow the directions exactly?  Ummm ... NO! :)  Hey, it was Sunday morning.  What better time to eat breakfast sausage????

I threw one into my trusty skillet and browned it to perfection.  One thing I did learn from browning these is that it would have been better if I had used a flat surface, instead of my hand, when forming the patties.  While the bottom of the patties is flat, the tops are not making it brown unevenly on one side.  Of course, that did NOT affect the taste.

Herbed Breakfast Sausage with Pancakes and Earth Balance

I asked my oldest son if he wanted a vegan sausage patty.  His response was exactly one word, "YUCK!"  However, he did say that the sausage patties smell like regular sausage patties and he didn't know how that was possible.  :::chuckle:::  My response, you ask?  I replied, "That's because I'm a great cook!"  He agreed.

This recipe actually yielded 15 sausages for me.  I think using the coffee measuring cup helped with that.  The sage flavor is very strong.  I thought with adding 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, the sausages might be too spicy, but they aren't spicy at all.  It's been years since I had breakfast sausage, but from my memory, these taste close.  I'll definitely be freezing the dozen I have left for future use and I'll definitely make this recipe again.  It's easy, quick, and yields great results!

A post blog entry note:  I did a nutritional analysis on these patties based on the 15 that I got from the recipe.  The results are per patty:  61 calories, 13 from fat; 1g fat; no saturated or trans fats; no cholesterol; 226mg sodium; 5g carbohydrate, 1g fiber; 7g protein.

Mushroom Barley Soup and Strawberry Ice Cream

I've been very blog lazy lately.  I made a couple of tasty items, but did I take pictures?  Nope!  I will of the Mushroom Barley Soup and post it, but I'm afraid the Strawberry Ice Cream is long gone.

First, the soup.  I belong to the Eat 2 Live Yahoo! group founded by Susan Voisin.  Recently, Susan posted a link to her recipe for Mushroom Barley Soup with Cannellini Beans and Cabbage on her website FatFree Vegan Kitchen.  I had two packages of mushrooms in my refrigerator, so this was the perfect recipe to use one of them.

I made this soup using organic mushroom broth to replace the vegetable broth.  Also, I used pinto beans instead of cannellini beans, and I used two cans versus one can.  I upped the mushrooms to 8 oz. of sliced baby bella  mushrooms and I used green cabbage instead of red cabbage.  

I don't ever have sherry in my house.  I had some Tokay Port Wine, but the bottle was unopened and it's a sweet wine, not a dry wine.  So, I used 2 tablespoons of Pinot Noir instead.  No, it's not the driest of wines, but the measurement was small and I figured it would do in a pinch.  I don't have spicy hot paprika, so I just used a teaspoon of the smoked paprika that I do have and added some red cayenne pepper and dried jalapeno flakes.  It had enough of a kick.

The soup is very thin and very light.  Normally, one wouldn't think soup would be an ideal meal in June, but it's been rainy and in the mid 60's here in Chicago, so it worked.  I like the lightness of the soup as it saves on calories.  I wouldn't make this soup in the coldest winter months unless I altered the recipe to make it into a creamy mushroom soup.  It's a good cool summer day soup.

I've been on a frosty dessert kick for the past couple of weeks in a determined attempt to use my ice cream maker more often.  After reading through several dozen ice cream recipes, I settled on Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream by David Lebovitz.

I altered the recipe a bit as I don't buy rice milk.  I decided to use 3/4 cup unsweetened original almond milk and 3/4 cup SO Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer.  Instead of honey, I used agave and I used slightly more than 1 1/2 pounds of organic strawberries.

The ice cream was icier than commercial ice creams.  I thought the texture was between ice cream and a sherbert.  The strawberry flavor was more pronounced than in commercial ice creams. The appearance was very close to the picture on David Lebovitz's recipe page.  It was a very deep pink.  I did have leftovers and it froze very well.  While the ice cream did get a bit hard, it wasn't like a rock and 30 seconds at 60% power in the microwave softened it to perfection.

I did a nutritional analysis on the version I made and the calorie count was under 170 calories per CUP.  It was about half of the calories of the watermelon sorbet I made a couple of weeks ago.  Shocking!  That was just an added bonus to an already tasty treat.  I'll be making this recipe again. 

My next frosty treat adventure will be some type of vanilla ice cream.  I have some Newman O's and I think I'll throw some of those in during the last 5 or 10 minutes of processing to make Cookies and Cream Ice Cream.  I promise to take pictures of that.

Summer Treats

I have an ice cream maker.  It's the kind with a compressor that does not require freezing the container.  I think I've used this ice cream maker twice in the three or four years that I have owned it.  It's been one of my forgotten kitchen gadgets ... that is, until today.

I bought a whole seedless watermelon, which I cut up on Friday evening to take on a trip yesterday to tour five wineries in Southwest Michigan with some girlfriends.  Unfortunately, we did not eat the watermelon on the trip.  That means I have an entire watermelon waiting to be eaten and my sons do not eat watermelon.  So, I decided to make sorbet with some of it.  I mean, really, I've had the ice cream maker long enough.  I need to start using it.

I chose a recipe by Alton Brown.  I couldn't find the written recipe, so I used the recipe shown on the video.  You can find the video here. The reason I chose this recipe is because I did not have to strain the watermelon after liquifying it in the food processor.  Plus, it has a little lemon juice and vodka (very little) in it.  Next time I make it, I'll add some lemon zest to the mixture before freezing it.  I think it would be much better with a more pronounced lemon flavor.

Here is the list of ingredients.

Watermelon Sorbet

1 lb. 5 oz. seedless watermelon
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons vodka
9 oz. sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest (what I'll be adding next time)

After mixing all of that in my food processor (using the metal S blade) until the sugar dissolved, I refrigerated it for about 3 hours, which is one hour longer than I needed to.  I poured the mixture into my ice cream maker and initially set the time for 40 minutes, but ended up letting it run for 50 minutes.  It's in the freezer now to firm up a little more.

This is definitely the first of many adventures I plan on having with the ice cream maker.  Now that I'm using it again, I will be making ice cream with almond or coconut milk or coconut milk creamer this summer.  I just bought some Newman's O creme-filled chocolate cookies, so I can make Cookies and Creme Ice Cream.  I'll be making that this week.  My sons will definitely eat that frosty dessert.

Caramel Apple Muffin Tops

Not this last week, but actually the week before, I made Caramel Apple Muffin Tops out of 500 Vegan Recipes.  I have a muffin top pan that I swear I have never used to make muffin tops.  I used it to make hamburger buns and vegan Yorkshire pudding, but never actual muffin tops.  So, when I was searching for a muffin recipe to make before work one day and saw this recipe, I thought it was definitely a match.

The recipe calls for a sturdy apple, such as Granny Smith.  However, I only had a few Fuji apples in my fridge, so I used one of those.  The longest part of the process was making the caramel apples.

It took quite a while for the liquid to reduce into a thick caramel sauce.  If you think the apples look great in that picture above, let me tell you, they smelled heavenly!  I didn't have any Sucanat, but I did have some vanilla cinnamon sugar.  I used 2 teaspoons of that in place of the Sucanat.

The recipe makes 6 good sized muffin tops.  I will say that the muffin tops stay flat, though and don't look like much of a muffin top when they were done baking.  They looked more like a muffin pancake (see picture below).  The texture of the finished muffin top was a bit dry.  Perhaps that's because I didn't have any quick cooking oatmeal and used 1/2 cup (instead of 3/4 cup) of oat flour instead.  I probably should have upped the applesauce a little.  Whatever the reason, the muffin tops were not moist and crumbly, but dense and dry.

I could definitely taste the oats in the muffin, but the cinnamon and caramel flavors from the apple mixture was lost.  I thought the muffin tasted a bit bland, and I attribute that to having no spices in the muffin batter.  I think the depth of the caramel apple theme would have been deepened by adding spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom?) into the batter before the caramel apples were added.

Jordan liked the taste of the muffin batter, as evidenced below. :)  She was chasing that bowl across the floor to lick up every drop of the batter.  I had one leftover muffin top that I ate a couple of days later and it still tasted great.  (I stored it in a green box to keep it fresh.)  All I had to do was heat it up a bit and it was good to go. 

Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh

Yesterday, I surveyed the contents of my refrigerator to see what I needed to use pronto.  I have portobella mushrooms that I still need to make into some delicious dish.  I also found a package of tempeh that needed to be used by May 20, 2011.  Since I have never used tempeh as a main dish, I decided to go for it.

I looked through a dozen cookbooks before deciding on Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh in Veganomicon.  (Find the recipe here.  Find the nutritional information here.) I served it with roasted Brussels sprouts and a baked potato with Earth Balance.  I wasn't sure what the tempeh would taste like, but the recipe was very simple.

First I cut the tempeh in half and then I cut each half diagonally to make triangles.  I boiled the tempeh for 10 minutes.  Next, I threw the ingredients together, added the tempeh, and let it marinate while I fixed everything else.  My tempeh isn't as dark as some of the other pictures I've seen, but I think that is because I used chardonnay for the wine instead of a red wine.  Also, I was feeling lazy, so I used reconstituted lemon juice in place of the fresh and 2 teaspoons of garlic powder in place of the crushed garlic cloves.

I grilled the tempeh on an indoor grill that cooks both sides at once for about 7 or 8 minutes.  It was very tasty.  I thoroughly enjoyed tempeh cooked this way.  I had enough left over so I had a quick dinner of tempeh and Brussels sprouts tonight.

I liked this dish so much that when I stopped at Whole Foods to pick up some So Delicious Creamer and Pleasant Morning Buzz coffee, I picked up another package of tempeh.  DEFINITELY, I will be making this again.  I'll also be trying the Smoky Grilled Tempeh in Veganomicon soon.  The recipe is here, but be forewarned that the name of the entry could be considered offensive if you are offended by profanity.  Just look down past the title.  :::smile:::

Lazy Sunday Mornings

It's 11:34AM and I have just now popped the Applesauce-Oat Bran Muffins from Veganomicon in the oven.  My youngest son, Derek woke up at 10:30AM, which is a full hour ago.  This is surprising as my oldest son, David is still asleep.  He is usually the earlier riser.  David and I are normally waiting on Derek to wake up for Sunday morning breakfast or we have to wake Derek up when the food is done.  Not today.  Derek is awake and he and I planned out breakfast.

I offered waffles, but Derek said no.  Then, I offered to make the Lower-Fat Banana Bread Muffins from Veganomicon that I had made a couple of weeks ago.  Derek said definitely and could I add some chocolate chips? I said sure and began to gather ingredients. That's when I discovered that the bananas I thought I could use were a day past usable.  So, I went onto Plan B.  Plan B was to search through my cookbooks for another muffin.  All I had to do was look at the next page in Veganomicon and I found my recipe.  Amazingly enough, I had everything I needed, including whole wheat pastry flour.

I followed the recipe pretty closely.  I used almond milk instead of soy or rice milk.  I only had a half cup of unsweetened applesauce, so I used half unsweetened and half sweetened.  I only added about 1/4 cup of raisins (if that).  We are not big raisin eaters here.  I will admit that my tastes have changed since adopting a vegan diet and raisins taste better and sweeter to me now than they did when I ate the Standard American Diet.

I made 6 jumbo muffins sprinkled with large decorator sugar (for my sons).  Although the sugar and half cup of sweetened applesauce will add more calories to my muffins, these are a calorie bargain.  If I had made 12 muffins, they would be a scant 100 calories (see the nutritional information here).  I figure the 6 jumbo muffins are about 225 calories, which is actually much lower than the 352 calories the Low-Fat Banana Bread muffins sported.

The muffins smelled heavenly when they were baking.  And, they taste as good as they smell.  One test I use is how do my sons like them?  David is the picky eater, so I pay attention to him.  He went back for a second muffin.  The muffins passed the family-friendly test.  These are definitely a keeper and will be in my rotation of Sunday morning treats.

For the Love of Gadgets and Sisters

I'm a gadget person.  Yes, I'll stand up and admit it before everyone.  I'm a gadget junkie.  Recently, I bought a microwave PC.  I have a regular PC, but the sales pitch of how it starts cooking in the microwave before it comes up to pressure lured me into getting one.  Of course, the day I received it, I HAD to try it out.

I made a recipe in the user guide that came with it.  It is Quick Mexican Rice and Beans.  I changed the recipe a bit.  I omitted the cheese and used brown rice instead of white, water instead of chicken stock, and cooked (from dry) black beans instead of red beans.  In essence, I had to veganize it.  Here's what I used:

1½ cups of long grain brown rice
2 cups of water
1 cup of salsa
1½ cups of black beans (cooked from dry)
½ teaspoon of cumin
½ teaspoon of chili powder
½ teaspoon of jalapeno flakes

I put it all into the microwave PC and cooked it for about 22 minutes total.  I let the pressure release naturally (took about 10 minutes).

I've been eating the rice all week, but the last few days, I made it into a wrap.  I bought Whole Grain Tortillas that had 13 gr. of fiber per tortilla.  I added Valentina Salsa Picante (the BEST Mexican hot sauce, I swear), shredded lettuce, 1 teaspoon of Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream, and a few (half dozen maybe) jalapeno slices.  It made a very tasty wrap!  I am sorry to say, I didn't get pictures of the rice or the wrap and now the rice is gone.  C'est la vie!

The second gadget I used this week was my Kindle.  I love my Kindle.  Period.  It is one of the best gadgets that I bought for myself.  However, I never use it to buy cookbooks.  I prefer paper cookbooks.  I like to look at the pictures, page through the cookbook, compare different recipes.  It's just easier to do with a paper cookbook.  That's what I thought before I bought a cookbook for my Kindle.  That's actually what I still think, but getting a cookbook on the Kindle isn't bad.

This week, I bought The Vegan Slow Cooker - Quick, Easy, Hot N Delicious for my Kindle.  It was a whopping $3.99.  It only has 20 recipes.  I was thinking it was a nice, little introduction to a cookbook on the Kindle.  I was right.  The Corn Chowder recipe caught my eye.  I've been looking for a good, no make that GREAT corn chowder recipe.  (This one is good, but I'm still looking.)

The funny thing about this cookbook is that it gives the on-top-of-the-stove directions and then, almost as an afterthought, gives slow cooker directions, if you even get them.  An example is the Amazing Lentil Stew states, "Would probably work in a slow cooker too."  I would NOT recommend this cookbook for slow cooker recipes.

The Corn Chowder recipe was pretty straightforward.  So, of course, I changed it to make it mine.  I didn't have any silken tofu, so I used extra firm tofu pureed with some unsweetened almond milk until smooth.  Also, I added about 1½ tablespoons of nutritional yeast.  I doubled the cumin and used dried thyme.

I used my absolute favorite chopping gadget, the Vidalia Chop Wizard.  I did not get mine at Amazon.com.  I bought mine at Bed, Bath, & Beyond.  I believe Target also sells them.  The choppers are $19.99 at either place.  This recipe called for ¼" chop of the onion, celery, carrot, and potatoes.  I used the small grid for the veggies and every single piece was uniform in size and shape.  I LOVE that thing.  Takes only a few minutes to chop everything versus how long it would take by hand.  There is absolutely no comparison.

Personally, I didn't like the tofu in the soup.  Now, I'll admit that's probably because I used extra firm tofu.  It may have turned out much better if it was silken.  It didn't have a grainy texture, but it had a grainy appearance.  Perhaps that was from the nutritional yeast, but I doubt it.  I'm just not a big person on tofu in soup as a thickener.  Next time, I'll cook the broth down and just add unsweetened almond milk. 

The soup had a nice flavor, but I honestly can't see it reheating well.  It made a fairly big pot.  The recipe called for 5 cups of water or broth and I only used 4 cups.  However, there is way more than I could eat and I just can't see the grainy texture improving upon reheating.  We'll see though.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Tomorrow, I'll be making something with portabella mushrooms as I have 4 huge mushroom caps that I MUST use.  I also have some broccoli rabe and some Brussels sprouts to use up.  Looks like I'll be paging through my recipe books tonight and tomorrow morning.

For the Love of Sisters

Finally, I leave you with a picture of Kobe and Jordan that my son took today.  This picture perfectly captures For the Love of Sisters.  These two dogs, both adopted from the Animal Welfare League 18 months apart, are as close as sisters born in the same litter.  Even now, as I type, they are laying about 1½ feet apart.  Kobe wakes Jordan up in the morning and they go outside together.  They make my heart smile.  I thought I'd share one of the precious moments I get to experience.